- Bonjour Madames et Monsieurs!
In this video, I want to talk to you
about luminosity masks in Lightroom Classic.
It's a really cool feature.
It really can change your photography,
where you can just make the sky darker
without affecting the rest of the elements of the photo,
or change the color of an object.
You'll see, it's a really cool feature.
Something you must absolutely know.
Let's get started.
(dramatic music)
So this is a photo of the Place Vendôme
that I took last month in Paris.
I'm gonna do a basic retouching,
open the shadows, bring down the highlights.
I'm gonna do crush the blacks and the whites.
And I liked the photo,
but I wish I could darken the sky a bit more
because you know how the eyes
goes to the brightest part of the photo.
So I'm gonna go here,
I'm gonna double click on effect
and I'm gonna lower the exposure and make a gradient.
But here's the problem,
my sky is darkened, but the building is darkened,
the building is darkened and the obelisk
of the Place Vendôme is darkened.
So, what can we do?
So now check this out.
I can hold down the option key on a Mac,
which is the alt key on Windows,
and I can move this to the right
and basically, this is gonna create a mask.
So remember a mask is, white reveals, black conceal.
So if I click on the range mask with the option key,
you see it's all white,
meaning this whole white part,
which is like a selection, is gonna be affected
by this slider.
You can also see it here by clicking
show selected mask overlay.
You can see this just shows you
what this slider will affect.
It's not gonna affect the bottom part,
but only the red part, okay?
But check this out, as you hold on the option key
and you move this to the right,
you will see that the buildings become darker
and darker and darker, okay?
And not all the buildings,
but some of the buildings become darker and darker
and that creates a mask
and the mask is gonna conceal.
It's gonna stop this slider,
that effect to go on the building.
So let me show you, check this out.
Before, everything is being affected.
After, the sky is less affected, but check it out.
Before,
after.
We still have a darkened sky
and it's less affecting the buildings, it's less doing it.
But you can make it even further.
You can use a smoothness slider.
If I move it a little bit to the left
and I lower the exposure a little bit,
you can see that it's mostly affecting the sky.
It's doing something a little bit weird here
because the sky that's darkened
is gonna reflect on the windows which is fine.
So you can move this back,
but that's kind of the whole purpose
because there was a lot of people back in the day,
that used to post this photo
where they darken the top of the photo,
but everything else is darkened.
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So, let me show you another example,
like on this black and white,
I love to do that also on a black and white,
make like a gradient.
But again, this is Yosemite,
and on El Capitan it's dark, this is dark,
Half Dome is dark.
So something here, I can go to range mask
and I can move this to the right
and you see, and move this a little bit maybe,
and now check it out.
Before,
after.
See El Capitan is darker but slightly darker,
but the sky is much darker.
So usually what I do-
By the way a little trick,
what I do on these kind of photos, I do 2 masks.
I do one like this,
and then I do another one for the very top of the photo.
'Cause I really like to close my black and white,
like Ansel Adams style, where you really have the,
almost the top of the photo that's burned
and the bottom that's kind of burned
to really focus the eyes of the person
in the middle of the photo.
Maybe add a bit of contrast.
Very, very important.
So check it out before,
without the gradients,
with the gradients.
So that's what the luminosity is,
it's just gonna help you mask this.
You know, let me show you again.
I just want to make sure you understand.
So, if I click here and select this gradient,
you can see if I go here.
Now, the sky, everything goes darker
and if I go to the right, only the sky
and I mean, it's not an exact science,
meaning the sky is getting less darkened,
but it's getting more dark than the mountain.
Because look at the mask,
the mask is pretty white on the sky
and a little grayish on the mountain.
And so that's what luminosity masks do.
Now, there's another feature of luminosity mask,
which is called Color Mask.
And let's say-
Let's say, I wanna change the color of that dress.
So, one way I could do it is I could go
to a circle here,
let me redo it.
I'm gonna make a circle around her
and I could go here in the hue
and just change it from blue to red.
But we have two issues,
you see it changes the skin there,
which we don't want
and the red is only on a gradient, it's not everywhere.
So if I unfeather this,
notice the dress is red, no problem,
but the skin is green and it's really weird.
But check this out.
If I go to range mask and I go to colors this time
and I take this little target tool
and I click just on the dress,
boom, check it out!
Only the address has been changed.
The mask created, isolated that dress
because it's, you know, it was just blue
in the middle of anything
and now I can change the dress with whatever color I want
and it's working perfectly.
And you can, you know, you can fine tune it
with the amount here.
So let me go back to red.
I can fine tune it, you know,
make it really red or a bit less red, you know,
and you're just fine tuning the mask.
You can see what the mask looks like
by holding the option key,
but it's gonna throw you off
because it's really just isolating that color.
That's why that color is so white
and it's pretty cool.
Check it out,
before,
after.
I only changed the color and look, the skin doesn't change.
Nothing else changed, it's really cool.
Oh guys, by the way,
last week I did a video on my favorite Lightroom shortcuts,
which you should know, this is 13 shortcuts.
You can download them. The link is right under the video.
You can print this and put it next to your computer.
There's over 200 shortcuts in Lightroom.
This is the 13 I've been using for 12 years.
I think they are the most important ones.
If you don't think they are the most important ones,
you can let me know, you can leave me a comment,
but all right, I'll see you in another video.